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As the COVID-19 vaccine rollout gains steam across the country, an increasing number of people are finding themselves with more protection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But just because you’ve been fortunate enough to get a vaccine doesn’t mean you can return to your pre-pandemic lifestyle. At least not yet. The COVID-19 vaccines are very effective for individuals, but they are most effective when everyone has gotten one. Your new vaccine will protect you from serious disease and will very likely keep you from getting COVID-19 at all....

In their study, using data from a total of 492 participants, who have self-identified as either ambiguous towards or opposing vaccination, the research team, led by Dr. Katarzyna Stasiuk, conclude that vaccine deniers are mostly led by a generalized negative attitude to vaccines. The arguments were collected during a conference, where people opposing the vaccination presented their stand on the subject. Curiously, even though they often reported their stance to be founded in their own or observed negative experience with vaccines, when asked about their reasoning, they were rather vague in their explanations....

Exposure to electronic-cigarette (E-cig) smoke caused mice to develop lung cancer, a new study finds. Published online today, October 7, 2019, in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study found that 9 of 40 mice (22.5 percent) exposed to E-cig smoke with nicotine for 54 weeks developed lung adenocarcinomas. None of the 20 mice from the study exposed to the same E-cig smoke without nicotine developed cancer. Led by Moon-shong Tang, Ph....

This simulated flyover of Pluto’s Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) and Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain) was created from New Horizons closest-approach images. Norgay Montes have been informally named for Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Sputnik Planum is informally named for Earth’s first artificial satellite. The images were acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers)....

A spectacular new image of the star-forming Carina Nebula has been captured by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory and released on the occasion of the inauguration of the telescope in Naples today. This picture was taken with the help of Sebastián Piñera, President of Chile, during his visit to the observatory on June 5, 2012. The latest telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile — the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) — was inaugurated today at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) Observatory of Capodimonte, in Naples, Italy....

With the presidential election a year away, pollsters will barrage the country with poll questions to get the pulse of the voters about the candidates. But how these media-reported polls are received by the public is often viewed with skepticism. In fact, a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania indicates that individuals disproportionately find polls more credible when their preferred candidate is leading....

A new clinical trial of undergraduate students during their university studies has shown positive effects of walnut consumption on self-reported measures of mental health and biomarkers of general health. The University of South Australia study, published in the journal Nutrients, also suggests that walnuts may counteract the effects of academic stress on the gut microbiota during periods of stress, especially in females. Lead researchers, PhD student Mauritz Herselman and Associate Professor Larisa Bobrovskaya, say the results add to the growing body of evidence linking walnuts with improved brain and gut health....

In cells with membranes damaged by lasers or disease mutations, a family of proteins act like carpenters to reseal the breach. The Yale team found that the structural scaffold of the nuclear membrane helps the repair of the breach during the healing process, they report January 31 in the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell. “If the envelope rips, the embryos survive because the structural scaffold stabilizes the tear and keeps the DNA protected,” said Shirin Bahmanyar, assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology....

A new discovery by Yale researchers may help lead to individualized treatments for lung cancer and other types of cancer. A Yale-led study describes how a known cancer gene, EGFR, silences genes that typically suppress tumors. The finding, published in Cell Reports, may lead to the development of more effective, individualized treatment for patients with lung cancer and other cancer types. Mutations in the EGFR gene are linked to multiple cancer types, including cancers of the lung, brain, and breast....

Airborne transmission of viruses, like the virus causing COVID-19, is not well understood, but a good baseline for study is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough. In a paper published in Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis discovered that with even a slight breeze of 4 kph, saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds. “The droplet cloud will affect both adults and children of different heights,” Drikakis said....

The study, based on surveys of 308 people who use opioids in Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, found that 27 percent indicated a preference for opioids containing fentanyl, and that people who prefer fentanyl are more likely to be younger, white, and daily users. The median age of those who prefer fentanyl was 38 years compared to 45 years for those who don’t prefer fentanyl. Fifty-nine percent of fentanyl preferers identified as non-Hispanic white, compared to only 29 percent among the non-preferers....

The Yukon-Kuskokswim Delta is one of the world’s largest deltas, and it stands as a remarkable example of how water and ice can shape the land. These images show the delta’s northern lobe, where the Yukon River spills into the Bering Sea along the west coast of Alaska. “The Yukon Delta is an exceptionally vivid landscape, whether viewed from the ground, from the air, or from low-Earth orbit,” said Gerald Frost, a scientist at ABR, Inc....

A study published in the journal Science has used data from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite to reveal that a highly magnetized dead star known as a magnetar has a solid surface with no atmosphere. Led by researchers at the University of Padova, the study represents the first time polarized X-ray light from a magnetar has been observed. This was the first time polarized X-ray light from a magnetar had been observed....

Superconductors are materials capable of conducting an electric current with no resistance whatsoever. They are behind the powerful electromagnets in particle accelerators, maglev trains, MRI scanners, and could theoretically enable power lines that deliver electricity from A to B without losing the precious kilowatts to thermal dissipation. Unfortunately, the superconductors known today can only work at very low temperatures (below -138 degrees Celsius/-216 degrees Fahrenheit), and the latest record (-13 degrees Celsius/8....

“We think we’re looking at a hot bubble of gas zipping around Sagittarius A* on an orbit similar in size to that of the planet Mercury, but making a full loop in just around 70 minutes. This requires a mind-blowing velocity of about 30% of the speed of light!” says Maciek Wielgus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. He led the study that was published today (September 22, 2022) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics....

We may be on the brink of a new paradigm for nuclear power, a group of nuclear specialists suggested recently in The Bridge, the journal of the National Academy of Engineering. Much as large, expensive, and centralized computers gave way to the widely distributed PCs of today, a new generation of relatively tiny and inexpensive factory-built reactors, designed for autonomous plug-and-play operation similar to plugging in an oversized battery, is on the horizon, they say....

A new kind of fiber developed by researchers at MIT and in Sweden can be made into clothing that senses how much it is being stretched or compressed, and then provides immediate tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or vibration. Such fabrics, the team suggests, could be used in garments that help train singers or athletes to better control their breathing, or that help patients recovering from disease or surgery to recover their breathing patterns....

A large scale malaria vaccine study led by the World Health Organization (WHO) has been criticized by a leading bioethicist for committing a “serious breach” of international ethical standards, finds a special report published by The BMJ today (February 26, 2020). The cluster randomized study in Africa is already underway in Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya, where 720,000 children will receive the RTS,S vaccine, known as Mosquirix, over the next two years....

The enormously diverse complexity seen amongst individual species within the animal kingdom evolved from a surprisingly small gene pool. For example, mice effectively serve as medical research models because humans and mice share 80-percent of the same protein-coding genes. The key to morphological and behavioral complexity, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests, is the regulation of gene expression by a family of DNA-binding proteins called “transcription factors.” Now, a team of researchers with the U....

The most famous fossils from the Cambrian explosion of animal life, which occurred over half a billion years ago, stand in stark contrast to their modern counterparts. These “weird wonders,” such as the five-eyed Opabinia with its distinctive frontal proboscis, and the fearsome apex predator Anomalocaris with its radial mouthparts and spiny feeding appendages, have become icons in popular culture. However, they were only quite recently recognized as extinct stages of evolution that are crucial for understanding the origins of one of the largest and most important animal phyla, the arthropods (a group that includes modern crabs, spiders, and millipedes)....